Count Dracula: from fictional character to legend

LITERATURE
I dare to bet that someone actualy thought about visiting the distant lands of Transylvania to search the castle where resides the legendary Count Dracula. I regret to say, you are not going to find him ... although probably will find many historical places and characters which inspired the story. Written in the nineteenth century, Dracula was not the forerunner of vampire legend but a success and an inspiration for art and literature that survives the test of time: from musical and action movies to romantic stories for teens, Vampires are familiar and recurring characters.
Dracula is a novel published in 1897 by Irishman Bram Stoker, who has turned his protagonist in the most famous vampire. It is said that the writer was based on conversations he had with a Hungarian scholar named Arminius Vámbéry, and that he was the one who told him about Vlad Dracula. The novel, written in epistolary way, presents other issues such as the role of women in the Victorian age, sexuality, immigration, colonialism and folklore.

Since its publication in 1897, the novel has never ceased to be in circulation, and new editions happen. However, until 1983 no marginal land left the tabloid literature to join the classics at the University of Oxford.
To describe the landscapes of Romania, Stoker used two works: one, by Emily Gerard's The Land Beyond the Forest (1888), and the other, a report on the principalities of Wallachia. To find the true historical Dracula, we must refer to the literary history of Stoker's novel: in Varney the Vampire, and the texts of Polidori, Charles Nodier, Hoffmann, Samuel Coleridge, Sheridan Le Fanu, Theophile Gautier and others, we will see how classic vampire character unfolds gradually to become the we all know by the name of Dracula
For those people of Tupperware still do not know, let's review what are the characteristics of a classic vampire character as inspired by Dracula:
- Drink human blood (their only food) and converts them into vampires who aseste his fateful bite and baptized in his own blood letting them drink it. If only they are bitten, do not turn into vampires.
- You can hold off with crucifixes, garlic sticks or flowers, the Host consecrated and holy water, but to die really, you must drive a stake through the heart or beheading has.
- Meets the obedience of repulsive creatures, such as rats, flies, spiders and bats, but also wolves, dingoes and foxes.
- Has telepathy and mind control.

- Has superhuman strength.
- You can become an animal (basically bat), or in fog.
- Lose their powers during the day. The vampire shuns daylight, which weakens but does not destroy it: can move at noon for a limited period of time (the Count Dracula in the novel, appears in broad daylight looking for Mina Harker).
- You can sleep on earth, brought from his birthplace, inside a coffin.

Faberge Egg: an unusual art object

ART
Art sometimes find the means to express themselves in places and the most unusual objects. In sharp contrast to an object as simple and everyday as egg, combine Febergé jewelry, characteristic exuberance Imperialist Russia with the Easter tradition to create an object worshiped by collectors worldwide.
A Fabergé egg is one of the sixty-nine jewelry created by Carl Faberge and his craftsmen of the company Fabergé for the Russian Tsars, as well as some members of the nobility and the industrial and financial bourgeoisie, between 1885 and 1917 . Eggs are considered masterpieces of jewelry art.
The most important party of the church calendar is Russian Orthodox Easter. It is celebrated with three kisses and exchanging Easter eggs. Regarding the Faberge Imperial eggs, they began to make in 1885 when Czar Alexander III commissioned a Easter egg for his wife, Empress Maria Fyodorevna. The egg reminded the empress's homeland, Denmark, and the jeweler had been inspired by an Easter egg that was in the Danish royal collections and pleased both the Czarina that the Czar ordered fabricate Peter Carl Faberge egg Gustavovich Easter each year to the Tsarina, stipulating only that the egg was unique and that it involved a surprise.
For the design of Faberge imperial eggs was inspired by various European artistic styles, such as Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism and the Modernist as well as artwork that looked during their stay and travel in Europe. Eggs were created to commemorate events such as the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway and to celebrate important anniversaries. Other eggs kept inside the imperial yacht Standart, the Uspensky Cathedral, the Gatchina Palace and Alexander Palace, to name a few.
Among the materials used by Faberge include metals such as gold, platinum, silver, copper, nickel, palladium, steel which were combined in different proportions in order to achieve different colors to the "shell" of the egg. The gemstones including sapphires, rubies and emeralds were used to decorate eggs and / or containing surprise when in size used was known as cabochon (round cut).

Atacama: the driest desert in the world

NATURAL WONDERS

The dictionary defines a biome with the name of "desert" as the area of ​​land in which rainfall rarely exceeds 250 mm per year. How do we call a place where it rains every 15 years??? Just something sub-classified (and note that it is not redundant) like a "dry" desert.

The Atacama Desert, the driest in the world, is located in the north of Chile, in the regions of Arica and Parinacota, Tarapaca, Antofagasta and northern Atacama Region. This desert is surrounded by the Andes mountains and the coast, covering about 105 000 km ². It is part of the Pacific Desert ecoregion, which includes all the coastal deserts of Chile and Peru.

The main cause of its origin is a global climatic phenomenon at this latitude creates deserts on the western coasts of all the continents of the Southern Hemisphere. Great stable high pressure systems known as anticyclones Pacific, remain along the coast, creating winds eastward moving storms. Moreover, the Humboldt Current carries cold water from Antarctica northward along the Chilean and Peruvian coast, water cooling sea breezes from the west, reduces evaporation and creates a cold air inversion-immobilized under a layer of warm air, preventing the formation of large clouds, producing rain.

The Atacama Desert is rich in metallic mineral resources such as copper, gold, silver and iron, as well as non-metallic minerals, among which significant deposits of boron, lithium, sodium nitrate and potassium salts. Also notable is the Salar de Atacama, which extracts the bischofita, permazante agent used in road construction.

Sports in the desert, the Atacama Desert is home to the world's athletesof the road. In this desert there have been various Baja Atacama Rally Championships, Rally Baja Chile, Patagonia Atacama Rally, and received the Dakar Rally Series in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012, organized by ASO This desert dunes are ideal for this type of sport, located on the outskirts of the city of Copiapo, Atacama Region.

Curry: taste a thousand flavors

Food&Drinks

Who travel to India and naively wants to visit a field where grown curry plant will be huge disappointment to learn that is not a product but a combination of dozens of different spices. A mathematician may be more accurate, but I'm right when I say that, then the number of combinations curry recipe is similar to the number of inhabitants of India, ie close to 1,000 million.

Curry is the name generally adopted in the West to describe a variety of dishes made with a blend of spices, more or less spicy Asian cuisines developed, east and southeast Asia.
The name comes from the word curry in Tamil language "kari" which dates back to southern India and is used to describe any dish with rice accompaniment. Just as the so-called tree of curry in Tamil language is designated as karuvapillai (literally meaning dark leaves) is an abbreviation of the Tamil word kari-veppilai and is used in many dishes of the state of Tamil Nadu (Southern India) as an accompaniment to vegetables, meat and rice.

The term curry means stew and was adopted by the English language before the arrival of British traders to the subcontinent, and was used to describe the dishes and stews possessed a rich broth various spices.

The term has now spread worldwide, and applies to any dish that has a spicy Indian or Asian style. The term is used in South India and is rarely used in the north. There are commercial mixtures such as curry powder garam masala is called in Hindi, Nepali and other dialects of northern India.

The curry mix often includes the following spices: pepper, basil, caraway, saffron, cinnamon, cardamom, dried onion, celery, coriander, cumin, turmeric, fenugreek, ginger, mustard, nutmeg, cayenne pepper and tamarind . Curry recipe varies for each region and the color depends on the ingredients of the mixture.

Curry Addiction: A number of studies have shown that the reaction of pain receptors to spicy ingredients in curries, including korma, leaving the body to release endorphins and combining runs with a complex sensory reaction to the variety of spices and flavors, this effect provides a subsequent desire or need to return the following times prefer a spicy curry.

San Andreas Fault: fear is always latent

SCIENCE

Human civilization, as modern and boastful, forgets, sometimes, the destructive power of nature. In Culture in 10 already discussed when studying volcanoes and tornadoes. Today, we present the San Andreas Fault, causing a most seismically active region of the world and they demonstrated throughout history its destructive power to the point that one day "the island of Baja California", will be separated from the Americas.

The San Andreas fault is located in a depression in the ground on a transform boundary area, right-shift between the North American plate and the Pacific plate. This transform fault is famous for producing large and devastating earthquakes. This system has a length of about 1,286 km and passes through the state of California, in the United States, and Baja California in Mexico. The system is composed of numerous faults or segments. In the south are notable failures San Jacinta, Imperial and Cerro Prieto. To the south the system ends San Andreas fault in the Gulf of California.

San Andreas Fault earthquake california due to the Pacific plate enters the Gulf of California and to the north of the San Andreas fault in the next 50,000 years, the Baja California peninsula of Mexico will be separated and converted into an island, will move northward. It is estimated to arrive off Alaska in about 50 million years. Each year approximately Baja California peninsula separates 6 cm.

It is considered that the Baja California peninsula formed by this fault. This same process is moving to the city of Los Angeles toward San Francisco Bay (both are on the same side of the fault) at a rate of about 4.5 cm per year. This can not be perceived with the naked eye, but has caused extensive damage to engineering works such as aqueducts, roads and farms. As a result of this failure numerous earthquakes originate, having befallen some of considerable magnitude as those of 1857, extending from Parkfield to El Cajon (estimated magnitude: 8.0), the San Francisco of 1906 (estimated magnitude 7.2) , or the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, near Santa Cruz, California (magnitude 7.1) and El Centro in 1940.

Polar Auroras: the psychedelic night

SCIENCE
Which palette in the sky, the aurora black starry sky transform into a spectacle for the human eye almost by accident. Polar conditions of temperature and relative location with respect to the earth's mass to produce sol particles accumulate energy achieving such levels that eventually break down in a wide range of shapes and colors. Seeing is believing.
Aurora is a phenomenon as brightness or luminescence that appears in the night sky, now in polar areas, but may occur in other parts of the world for short periods of time. In the northern hemisphere is known as aurora borealis, and in the southern hemisphere and aurora australis, named
The Northern Lights are visible from September to March, though at times makes its appearance during the course of other months, as long as the atmospheric temperature is low enough. The best months to see it are January and February, as it is during these months where temperatures are lower in the north. Its equivalent in south latitude aurora australis, has similar properties.
A polar aurora occurs when charged particles (protons and electrons) are guided by the Earth's magnetic field and affect the atmosphere near the poles. When these particles collide with atoms and molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, which are the most abundant components of the air, part of the collision energy to excite those atoms such energy levels (excited state) than when the energy is dissipated deenergized in visible light of various colors.
The colors we see in the aurora depend on the atomic or molecular species that excite solar wind particles and energy level reach those atoms or molecules: i) Oxygen is responsible for two primary colors of the aurora, green / yellow, ii) Nitrogen, at a collision can start some of their outermost electrons produces blue light, iii) while helium molecules are often responsible for the color red / purple lower edge of auroras and the curved outer parts.

Legionaries: Discipline as the key to success

HISTORY
A great empire is forged from great minds, both political and scientific. However, what sustains it, and will always be, a powerful and feared army. More is not always better, and the Romans showed it. Discipline, loyalty and courage allowed them for more than 10 centuries to protect their beloved empire from foreign invasions. The legionaries, one of the most memorable military bodies of human history.
The legionary was a heavy infantryman member of a military unit of the Roman army, formed usually by Roman citizens over 15 years.
The legionary was usually armed with two javelins, a sword (gladius), and up to the time of Tiberius, a dagger. For your protection wore a helmet, armor rings, plates or rectangular scales and a shield bearing a metal shield or umbo to the hand position. Completed their equipment a pair of sandals and a backpack or bag.
One of its main attributes, since often faced with larger and better equipped armies, was to be part of a highly disciplined body in constant training, both to military maneuvers precisely and accurately.
The length of military service was a legionnaire in early Republic of the duration of the campaign. In the second century. C. service was established that the maximum should be 16 campaigns. After the reforms of Marius, the service time was set at 25 years, who were reduced to 20 in the time of Augustus. Received a pay for your services, call stipendium from Furio Camillo reforms in the fourth century. C., at the end of their employment, as of Gaius Marius reforms expected to receive a plot of land, which conditioned life seriously end of the Roman Republic
They left their legacy to a different member military corps in history. For example, the French Foreign Legion, the Legion Legion Spanish and Polish.

Badminton: like tennis, but more refined

SPORTS
It's a game of tennis, NO! It's a game of volleyball, NO! It is ... Badminton! A sport, a mixture of many, but with lots of character earned enough respect to call himself an Olympic sport. Its unique "ball" gives a speed and grace to the game that make it a pleasant sight for the sports lover.
Badminton is a racquet sport individual or couple who are placed in opposite halves of a rectangular court divided network. Unlike other racquet sports in badminton ball is not played, but with a projectile called wheel, pen or cock, which consists of a hemisphere (like a ball) surrounded at its base by feathers that make you go slower. Such a design provides resistance aerodynamic projectile path, giving rhythm to the movements and preventing their diversion in case of wind.
Players must hit the shuttlecock with their racquet so that it crosses the track above the net and falls in the sector opponent. The point ends when the pen touches the ground, to overcome the network.
Badminton is a very modern version of a simpler primitive game called battledore, which was invented in China and that in the early years was a simple form of entertainment. He practiced with two wooden paddles and a ball. This was modified so that their flight was slower.
The current badminton game came from the version that was played in India, where it was called Poona, name of a country's population which was originally played. Some British army officers saw the game in India and brought to England around 1873. There, the Duke of Beaufort was interested in the game. Since regularly practiced his country estate in Gloucestershire, known as Badminton, the name associated with the game continued. In its original form, badminton was a rather formal game was practiced wearing Prince Albert coats, buttoned shoes, tie and baggy pants of seda.Y to play it was necessary to belong to a royal family.
The first badminton club was formed in Bath, England, in 1873. The game implemented in the United States in 1890 and was also introduced in Canada. The National Badminton Association (ANB) of the United States was established in 1895. At that time the rules were unified.
The first tournament championship for men and women in England was held in 1899, and the first for women and men in 1900. The first American championships were held in 1937 in Chicago and Toronto. From 1992 he became an Olympic sport.

Walt Disney: Father of Cartoons

HISTORIC CHARACTERS
His name is best known for amusement parks, for his films and even for its thousands of souvenir shops to the wider world. However, there is a man, a mind behind all that empire. An advance that he understood that the fantasy of animation hand could achieve similar success or even superior to traditional film industry. His success was complete and his legacy lives on in millions of children around the world. Today we present to Walt Disney but from two respects perhaps less known, its beginnings and some myths surrounding his political thought.
Walter Elias Disney was a producer, director, writer and American entertainer. He was the founder, along with his brother Roy O. Disney, The Walt Disney Company, which generates annual revenues of 30,000 million dollars, and the main architect of a distinctive style of animated films.
1) His beginnings: In his youth, Disney was fascinated by the possibilities of animation. He spent several days in the Kansas City Public Library perusing books anatomy and mechanics. He also read a book of Muybridge Edweard about animation.
After two years working for a short company, thought he had enough experience to start a new business on your own. In 1922, he founded the company Laugh-O-Gram Films, Inc., dedicated to making animated shorts based on popular fairy tales and stories for children.
His first character was "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit", although after his success lost the rights to Universal Studios. After losing the rights to Oswald, Disney decided to create a new character. We discuss whether the idea first animated mouse (which was basically like Oswald, but with round ears instead elongated) was Disney or his partner Iwerks. What matters is that Mickey Mouse was born. The success was immediate and resounding. Disney himself was responsible for the vocal effects of his first films and was the voice of Mickey Mouse until 1947.
2) Your ideology: Its growth and expansion is history that everyone knows ... but what is the ideology that identifies the "Disney look"? The ideology of Walt Disney, as is evident in his films, is based primarily on the defense of the values ​​of the "American way of life" ("American Lifestyle"), in which he firmly believed.
Some argue that it also had a penchant for fascism. However, if Disney ever had sympathies for fascist regimes, dismissed as the country entered the war against the Axis. During the war, worked with the government making several propaganda films, among which the short Der Fuehrer's Face, which are caricatured Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito and ends with an ode to the virtues of democracy.

Salto del Angel: water falls from the sky

NATURAL WONDERS
Since ancient times, man was fascinated by waterfalls, and its power is relentless, rainbows forming in its path or generally wonderful place is immersed. Among them are American whole hops called Iguazu Falls, the natural beauty mixed with civilization in Niagara Falls and of course, the highest in the world: "Salto del Angel"
Angel Falls is the highest waterfall in the world, with a height of 979 m (807 m of uninterrupted fall) generated from the Auyantepui. It is located in the Canaima National Park in Bolivar State, Venezuela.
This nature reserve, established as a national park on June 12, 1962 and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1994, covers an area of ​​30,000 km ² to the borders with Guyana and Brazil and its size is one of the most extensive in the world. The name that is known internationally, Salto Angel, was suggested by a Venezuelan in honor of aviator Jimmy Angel, who in 1937 more formally confirmed the existence and exact location of the crash to fly over in an airplane and later settle at the top, giving it just global impact. In the XXI century, was one of 28 finalists in the election of the seven natural wonders of the world.
Angel Falls is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Venezuela, but even today, a trip to the falls is not a simple matter, because the area is isolated by thick jungle, and make navigation dangerous tepuyes air. You can reach the region by a plane flight from Caracas or Ciudad Bolivar to reach Canaima camp. Other tourists prefer to reach the falls by more natural means, crossing the jungle waterways to reach the base of the jump.
It was inspired by many Hollywood movies: much of the landscape of the fictional moon "Pandora" in the science fiction movie of 2009 James Cameron's Avatar (awarded with several Oscar), were inspired by Angel Falls, the Auyantepui and in the Canaima National Park landscapes in general. Similarly, in the 1998 movie Beyond the dreams starring Robin Williams, Angel Falls is explicitly mentioned and displayed it as a unique and spectacular, almost fantasy.

Cubism: beauty in the abstract

ART
And one day ... man created beautiful image through imperfect representation of reality. Originally equally loved and rejected today to recognize their contribution to human heritage. Cubism is an art style more to the story, is a gateway to a current vanguard that will never find its limits.
Cubism was an art movement developed between 1907 and 1914, born in France and headed by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. It is an essential tendency leads to the rest of the European avant-garde of the twentieth century. It is not an ism more, but the final break with traditional painting.
Main characteristics: Cubist paintings, traditional perspective disappears. Try the forms of nature through geometric shapes, lines and surfaces fragmenting. Is adopted so-called "multiple perspective": it represented all parts of an object in the same plane. The representation of the world was going to have no commitment to the appearance of things from a certain perspective, but with what is known about them. By that appeared at the same time and in the same plane different views of the object: for example, is depicted frontally and in profile, on a human face is in profile nose and eye front, a bottle on your vertical cut and horizontal cut.
Are eliminated so typical colors were suggestive of Impressionism or Fauvism. Instead, used as pictorial muted tones grays, greens and browns. The monochromatic dominated the first period, subsequently widened the palette.
The resulting work is difficult to understand by not having a benchmark immediate naturalistic, which explains that it was the first artistic movements needed exegesis by the "critical", reaching written discourse considered as important as the practice artistic. Thereafter, all avant-garde artistic movements were accompanied by critical texts that explained.

Mexican tacos: a world classic

FOOD & DRINKS
Grab some meat (whole, billet, chopped or as you like), mix with a carbohydrate and voila ... we have a gastronomic success. Fit this description, the sandwich, the burger and the "hot dog", but one of the world's favorite replaced wheat flour with corn and filling it incorporates vegetables, cheese and a sauce as spicy as you hold the palate: these Mexican tacos are the dearest.
The tacos are a Mexican dish consisting of a tortilla rolled or folded so that it can contain various types of food. It is a fundamental recipe, but with multiple variations, since blocks can be filled with a myriad of dishes. You eat with your bare hands and is usually accompanied with green sauce or red sauce, usually, but likewise can be served with any of the infinite types of raw or cooked sauces and dressings own traditional Mexican cuisine. On cue, like any other manifestation of Mexico's culinary culture is directly associated with the ingredients used in each geographic region of the country.
At present the tacos have spread worldwide as a type of fast food, and for reasons marketers are usually confused with other cooking styles (notably with variants) Tex-Mex and several U.S. fast food chains where the tortilla is fried oil industrially producing toast U-shaped, which is not essentially corresponds to that of a real taco.
History: Actually can not say exactly what date it was invented, but it is believed that the dish has its origins in pre-Hispanic Mexico. One theory is that this existed because men worked all day in the countryside, so women invented this food, as it was easy to transport and easy to consume. According to some researchers, say the first taco from which it is known, was documented by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, in his chronicle, "True History of the Conquest of New Spain" by Hernán Cortés in Coyoacan for his captains and conquerors.
Mexican food is based on the turkey, and it was the only domesticated bird. There was also hairless dogs (Xoloitzcuintle), which is fattened for consumption. His flesh was less estimated than the turkey. It is said that sometimes consumed together, the turkey's dog up and down "to make up". Because of this, it is believed that the tacos were before the conquest of these meats. And then to conquer, this tradition was changing, taking food from the Spanish, and therefore the stew to be put to the blocks began to be of another type of meat.
It is mentioned that the Spanish could not pronounce quauhtaqualli word with the natives called this dish, just say taqualli and eventually the name was transformed, eventually adopting the name of taco.